Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”: It is because, indeed, with respect to a person who is still within the nature of Creation, there is no difference between the love of God and the love of his fellow person. This is because anything that is not him is unreal to him.

I cannot feel others. I feel them to the extent that I depend on them. In other words, I don’t actually feel others, but I feel my dependence on them, how much I can lose if something happens to them.

This is the only way we calculate everything. Even a mother feels how much she can lose if her baby has any problems. This is the scale we call “love.”

“I love you” means that I depend on you. So, it is by no means spiritual love, but corporeal love. I enjoy someone and the fear that something might happen to him since otherwise I will suffer. I love someone with whom I feel good. He may be my son who gives me pleasure.

We, however, are talking about something that is totally different: about how, from the love of the created beings, we reach the love of the Creator. Although we use the example of a mother’s love in our world, we don’t know actually what love means on a “human” level.

We must develop a totally new type of love. The word itself is misleading, and we have to be careful of making mistakes. It is about a totally different relationship and discernment, about bestowal that comes from me outward to someone who is outside my feelings.

Today, I feel everyone. I feel what is going on in the world, and it is only according to the calculation of gaining or the fear of losing. The desire to receive is looking for sources of pleasure and stays away from what can harm it.

These are the only things that enter me, but I don’t feel anything that is not part of my pleasure or suffering. This is because my “sensitive material” is a desire to enjoy. It is the Masach (screen) on which the pictures of my reality are reflected. In such a display, I only can see things that are within the range of my interest, which might bring me self-benefit or pain and suffering.

There are things that I don’t feel because they don’t cause me pleasure or pain, like different fields, waves, X-rays, and so forth. As we develop, we recognize more things to which we should pay attention because they can be either beneficial or harmful.

It is the same when it comes to love of friends. We don’t know what it means and we don’t feel it in our senses. What can we compare it to? Is it bad when you are loved? It isn’t the love of the friends toward me, but my love toward them when I totally give myself to them, take care of them, worry about them, help them, and bestow upon them.

Who needs such love in our world? If they loved me and served me, it would be another issue: “I am ready to receive your love. Go ahead; who is first?”

However, we are speaking about a transition to the level of the love of the Creator, about mutual guarantee. The goal of creation is to love thy friend. Through that, we enjoy bestowal, but only the bestowal not in order to enjoy. We are bestowing against the desire, by overcoming it.

So, we must pay a little more attention to the right meaning of our work in the group. It is impossible to interpret it according to the images in our world. Closeness, love, and connection are all concepts that exist above the overcoming, above the Machsom (barrier). Until then, I won’t overcome anything, but am simply going through the period of preparation.[88932]From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/24/12, “Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah)”

It is very important to take part in the conventions and meetings that we hold since this attack really advances a person and allows him to get closer and to connect to others.

There are people who even find it very hard to sit among others and they count the hours until all this is finally over and they will be able to go home. But it is important to feel even such situations deeply, since it is a very good way to learn. We should only try not to get stuck in this state for a long time and to move forward as quickly as possible. Everything is determined according to how you subdue yourself before the environment.

We shouldn’t think that we are advancing only during these attacks when we are under the influence of the powerful environment, subduing ourselves before it, since we have no choice. It is possible to advance even faster during the usual daily lesson. In every lesson a very strong Light is revealed to us, even stronger than during the convention.

The whole point is that during the lesson we cannot hold on to the same sharpness of the senses and devotion in the same intensity. During the congresses the special actions, the special conditions, and the feeling of the attack, influence us. During the daily lesson it is a continuous war.

We have to build up power during the convention, the power we have attained during the attack, but later we have to fulfill it day by day and to understand that these are the true conditions of the war. During the lesson we are in a daily war, until we finally reach the true prayer.

I have to constantly examine myself and constantly keep the three conditions of the prayer. There is nothing but a prayer, a request, which includes the feeling of how great the Creator is, a self-check of whether I did everything possible, and of whether I am really devoted to the goal with all my soul and value it more than life itself. In order to do that I must constantly examine myself since everything that is connected is the essence of my attitude to the upper, to the higher level, to the unified system.[88860]From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Shamati #209

Answer: The workshops allow us to clarify the types of connections among us.

Question: Do I actually discover a lack of connection with the friends or is it the opposite?

Answer: Both. Through the questions in the workshop, I clarify where I am and what I lack in order to attain what I desire.

Together with nine other friends, I begin to clarify the question we were asked and to penetrate their opinions and their thoughts, such as what they think about the same type of connection or the type of clarification. Through that, I already am in contact with them. I already see to what extent we “connect.”

We are all different, and in the workshops we clarify how we should connect. Is it possible? With whom should I connect? Do I agree or disagree?

I constantly build the forms of connection among us. This is the workshop, and it already clarifies and reveals this collective network. Thus, I have a twofold task:

On one hand, I must see the friends as great so that I can lower my head before them and be small among them. Compared to them, I am a zero, while they are all number one with several zeros after it. Then, accordingly, I am incorporated in them and become a “spiritual embryo.”

On the other hand, I must be one, or ten, or a hundred, and they must be the zeros. However, “zeros” in this context mean how much I can bestow upon them and what help and support I can give to them.

So, a middle line is created between these two extremes that equalizes them (=•=). Thus, the point of balance is created at which we reach a common ground. Each one respects the others as much as he can, each one humbles himself before the others as much as he can and, at the same time, is ready to raise the goal and the work in their eyes.

All this is in our thoughts when I am with the friends, and we discuss the questions in the workshop. I hear them and I think that one speaks nonsense, the other didn’t understand the question, and the third speaks logically instead of emotionally. The fourth seems to speak to the point, but I resent the fact that his words are deeper and wiser than mine.

Thus, I begin to work mutually with the friends and experience different states, and that is great. We just need to take what is going on seriously. “I have come here in order to connect in order to pass on to them my energy and to receive everyone’s power. This hour and a half is the most beneficial time for me.”

Of course, I see how the strange thoughts throw me off in different directions and how my inner resistance doesn’t allow me to agree with the friends. Great! I will not find an opportunity for more intensive clarification and to work on a higher “frequency.”

It is a pity that during the workshops there are those who exchange words like politicians, others who use different expressions from the bank they have in their memory, and others become psychologists and analysts. The main thing, here, is the feeling I experience in my heart.

We must learn from the ego’s endless urges since it is a “helpmate.” Our ego is an “angel” in the hands of the Creator through which He evokes us. So, I must see how the Creator doesn’t leave me even one moment of rest, and how he evokes my ego again and again in different ways in order to allow me to advance as fast as possible.

The workshops are the most helpful time, but, if we begin having them every day, attendance will drop immediately, and it will become a burden, hard work. We may think that it is a good idea to continue the convention for another week or two, or a month or two, until we succeed, until we rise to the spiritual level, but we are weak. We can hold on for another day or two, but not more than that.[88844]From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/23/12, Questions and Answers

Opinion (Zbigniew Brzezinski, political scientist [blog author’s comments in bold font]): “I do think that we have unfortunately delegitimized ourselves, therefore making it easier for some parts of the world driven by historical narratives to be instinctively hostile to us. We have ignored that, and we have acted as if we were endowed with some special mission. George W. Bush even said, ‘Our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world.’”

– This is the mistake on the part of the US.

“We have to start understanding as a nation that we have to act differently. We have to rebuild coalitions. … If we are intelligent about it, we are still in position to be the most influential force in the world, but we have to be intelligent. And to be intelligent, we have to have leaders who understand this, who have a sense of the fundamental historical change that is making this century different from the preceding one.”

– This is impossible because for this they need to know the plan of the Creator, Nature, instead of inventing the future themselves that is opposite to the goal of Nature.

“But more important, perhaps, or at least as important, we have to have a public that has some rudimentary understanding of foreign affairs. What really makes me worried is that our public doesn’t understand the world. It’s not even informed about the world. … We have a public that’s ignorant and susceptible to demagogy. And that handicaps leadership, even if it is intelligent. Of course, it becomes worse if the leadership is not very intelligent and itself operates with simplistic slogans.”

– Ignorance of the world and its future form is in our case the general condition of all those controlling the world.

“We are less aware for a very simple reason: because the world is much more complex. Americans weren’t better informed about global history before, and they are still abysmally informed about global history. Americans weren’t very informed about global geography. They’re still basically ignorant, even though that is scandalous. …

“But I think what it would take is some shared national consensus about how we define a decent and responsible life in the modern complex world. I don’t think we have that. We have slogans about being successful. We have slogans about ‘job creators.’ We have slogans about everybody having the right to reach the sky in the quest for material self-satisfaction. We have a definition of the good life, which involves the accumulation of material goods plus entertainment.

“These are clusters of issues that are interrelated, and it will require a real jolt for us to start thinking seriously about how we can re-create a healthy society here that is still the compelling image for the world that it once was. Then, the American dream was widely shared. Today, it isn’t.”

– For this, you must at least have a plan of the future history of humankind and the possible ways of development as they are dependent on our behavior; all this is given by the science of Kabbalah if we will wish to reveal it for ourselves. The fate of the world is in his hands if he understands how to manage this fate.[88678]